Peggy Burke, Thinker (1917) 🇺🇸

Every young lady has thoughts. Peggy Burke has hers. But it’s different with Peggy because she has been a Thanhouser leading woman.

by G. T. Bindbeutel

After a career as a leading woman in photodramas, a young lady’s mental gymnastics are no longer merely a procession of thoughts, but have become a pageant of interpretive visualizations.

For instance, Peggy says that every thought that comes to her has its application to some deep phase of life, illuminating the phase with a calcium flood, making it perfectly fathomable, as all proper phases should be.

Peggy came shyly into the Thanhouser Publicity Bureau recently and admitted that she had had a thought at twenty-eight minutes past four o’clock of the afternoon of the previous day.

We fortified ourselves with a bristling array of pencils and a breastwork of memorandum pads. A nod as signal started Peggy.

“My thought has to do with the modern country girl,” began Peggy, at first nervous, but quickly steadying under the grandfatherly shine in our eyes. “Coupons have made Miss Rustic a cigaret smoker and cocktail consumer. Big business has altered her from a backward gawk to a brazen, modish little know-it-all. Now, why not a drama?”

We held up a detaining traffic-cop’s hand.

“No, Peg. Let’s lead up to the drama by an interpretive camera study. That’ll start the photodramatic genius on the scent. Lemme see. Can you be in costume at ten twenty-three? S’good! With all props? Bully! I’ll have the fotog there and please dont keep us waiting.”

Of course, that’s the only way for a press-agent to deal with these long-lashed leading ladies, or they would be in the office every few minutes with some “clerk, make-a-note” command. Show ‘em their place, even if they are as interesting as Thanhouser Peggy. Right!

Peggy was on time, and we stage-managed the picture. It ought to be on the page with this, and Peggy says to call it “Just Before Milking Time.”

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Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, April 1917

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[Transcriber’s Note: George T. Bindbeutel (the author of this article), formerly editor of "Motor Print,” worked as Thanhouser’s Publicity Director from 1916 to 1917]